Valentine’s Day Weekend in Montreal.

Last weekend, Kraig and I spent the holiday weekend in Montreal. It was a nice way to spend our ninth Valentine’s Day together and our first one as a married couple. The drive up north took about 5 hours and flew by because we were listening to the Serial podcast.

We rented an apartment off airbnb that was on Atwater street. A lot of people told us this is an up and coming neighborhood. It was walking distance to public transportation, restaurants, and bars.

We wanted to have dinner at Joe Beef, but it was full because it was Valentine’s Day. The hostess there was very nice and suggested their sister restaurant Vin Papillon which was two doors down. She called them ahead to let us know that we were coming over and we were greeted there by another friendly hostess. We had very good service at this restaurant/wine bar and the tapas plates were so yummy. My favorite was the shaved ham and cheese plate.

The next day, we had breakfast at Quoi de n’Oeuf which included eggs benedict and a crepe. We ordered the chocolate, custard, and fruit crepe. However, we were delivered the plain fruit crepe which was good, but not what we wanted. Since there seemed to be a language barrier with the waiter because we’re both bad at speaking french, we just chose to enjoy what we received. This place had good breakfast and I would recommend it to a friend.

After breakfast, we walked to Atwater Market to take a look around and pick up some chocolate croissants, a baguette, and cheese.

We dropped our groceries at our apartment and then headed over to the Notre-Dame Basilica for a tour that was $5/person and a very beautiful place.

We walked around the cute little streets, stopped at a cafe for a cappuccino and to warm up while we decided on our next destination. We chose to go grab some beers and food at Dieu du Ciel. It was busy and our waiter forgot about the food we ordered, but we still enjoyed ourselves and sampling some different beers they had.

Dinner that night was at Garde Manger. We ordered octopus and oysters as an appetizer, short ribs as the main course, and a homemade vanilla ice cream sandwich with a salted chocolate cookie and caramel drizzled on top.

After dinner, we made our way back to the neighborhood we were staying in for one last drink at the Burgundy Lion Pub just to check out the place.

One of the Uber drivers we met on Saturday told us that Montreal is famous for their bagels. I wasn’t aware of this. I thought New York City was famous for their bagels, but that’s it. We went to one of the highly popular bagel places before our drive back to Massachusetts on Sunday. We waited outside Fairmount Bagel in the freezing cold to sample some of the best bagels ever. Let me tell you, these are good, but not life changing. I’ve had better bagels visiting New York City and from Atlantic Bagel in my hometown. I’m pretty convinced that I will never have a bagel in my life that is better than the Bagel Shop’s, ice cream that beats Nona’s, or a calzone that comes close to Crow Point. If you ever visit Boston and decide to take a day trip outside of the city, go to these places and go for a walk at World’s End.

Back to talking about Montreal. We finished our bagels and then drove home to a place that has more snow than Canada. Massachusetts. 😉